By Bethany Jean Clement
From The Seattle Times
It’s this past August, and it’s my birthday, and the incoming voicemails are, as they have been for some time, inexplicably delayed. Today seems to be the day to consult the oracle: “How to fix …” The answer comes from the ether immediately: too much stuff from the past. Some of the old ones must be deleted.
The one at the very bottom of the voicemail well is from my birthday eight entire years ago. It has been patiently waiting. It is from my father, also an August baby, who would always call early in the morning on my birthday, and sometimes I would let it go to voicemail even if I was, unusually, already awake, because I knew he would sing, low and maybe comically fast in the middle, one verse of the birthday song. Only he ever called me Beth, or sometimes Bethy, if the need for an extra syllable should arise….